Malaysia airlines plane may have crashed 239 people on board #5

[ilovepierre]

Do we know for sure it actually kept flying for hours? Or is that just rumor at this point? I agree there is almost no way the pilot just drove around for hours before committing suicide. That would be incredibly odd and pointless, as would turning off the transponder - unless the theory is that he didn't want anyone to know it was a suicide so he didn't want it to be found. It seems quite unlikely to me, but so do all the other scenarios.

BBM.
I was just going to ask that!
I also agree with the rest of your post

Any theory seems to make sense at this point!

 

[Softail]

• More than 20 top technology people (non USA citizens) aboard that plane, including a mysterious PhD professor of technology and a group of Chinese and Malaysian nationals headed to a business conference on a Saturday morning, from a company named Freespace that specializes in high-technology electronic warfare and the production of radar-blocking aeronautic technology

It is Freescale Semiconductor.



Freescale Semiconductor Employees Confirmed Passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 8, 2014-- Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL) has confirmed that 20 of its employees were confirmed passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Twelve are from Malaysia and eight are from China. The entire Freescale Semiconductor community is deeply saddened by this news. The company is continuing to monitor the situation and will provide more information as it becomes available.

 

[angela]

I've answered it 3 times (or more) on these threads.

I was referring to CNN. I am sorry I haven't been able to read every post.

 

[Montjoy]

Do we know for sure it actually kept flying for hours? Or is that just rumor at this point? I agree there is almost no way the pilot just drove around for hours before committing suicide. That would be incredibly odd and pointless, as would turning off the transponder - unless the theory is that he didn't want anyone to know it was a suicide so he didn't want it to be found. It seems quite unlikely to me, but so do all the other scenarios.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malays...sent-signal-4-hours-after-vanishing-1.2570313

 

[LaborDayRN]

Do we know for sure it actually kept flying for hours? Or is that just rumor at this point? I agree there is almost no way the pilot just drove around for hours before committing suicide. That would be incredibly odd and pointless, as would turning off the transponder - unless the theory is that he didn't want anyone to know it was a suicide so he didn't want it to be found. It seems quite unlikely to me, but so do all the other scenarios.

US officials have confirmed as much, and now Malaysian officials agree. There are MANY posts with links in the previous thread. HTH

 

[JerseyGirl]

Clipped for length. I don't think this point is a fact. Nobody seems to have confirmed that the 20 people from the company going to the conference were "top technology people" at all

Employees of Freescale Semiconductor who were on a Malaysia Airlines flight presumed to have crashed were doing sophisticated work at the U.S. chipmaker.

The 20 Freescale employees, among 239 people on flight MH370, were mostly engineers and other experts working to make the company's chip facilities in Tianjin, China, and Kuala Lumpur more efficient, said Mitch Haws, vice president, global communications and investor relations.

"These were people with a lot of experience and technical background and they were very important people," Haws said. "It's definitely a loss for the company."

None of Austin, Texas-based Freescale's most senior executives were on board the Boeing Co 777-200ER airliner that vanished from radar screens about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on Saturday.

The employees who were on board, 12 from Malaysia and eight from China, came from a range of disciplines and they were part of a broad push by Chief Executive Officer Gregg Lowe to make Freescale more efficient and cost effective, Haws said.

Top-quality engineers are hard to come by for chipmakers and other technology companies, and losing them can have a major impact on business, regardless of their seniority.

While the employees on the flight account for less than 1 percent of Freescale's global workforce of 16,800 people, they were working toward the same goals and their loss will reverberate throughout Freescale, Haws said.

They had been streamlining facilities in Tianjin and Kuala Lumpur that Freescale uses for testing and packaging microchips used in automobiles, consumer products, telecommunications infrastructure and industrial equipment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/us-malaysia-airlines-freescale-idUSBREA280T020140309

bbm

 

[CoverMeCagney]

I've answered it 3 times (or more) on these threads.

Answer it again for us please , I have also missed a few chunks of thread.

 

[gitana1]

I agree that pilot suicide is a possibility but then I wonder what would be the point of turning off the transponders and turning around? Why not just put it in the South China Sea? Because of this, pilot suicide is low on my list.

I don't know. But another pilot who committed suicide turned off the transponder, to my knowledge. It's in one of the pilot suicide cases I just cited last thread.

Why is transponder made available to the pilot to turn on or off?

Why,/when would a pilot want to turn it off?

I quoted this last thread:

And there is often more than one. "Boeing would have at least two transponders," he said. "What happens is sometimes you're flying along and, say, your transponder breaks and reports the wrong code or wrong altitude, air traffic control will go, 'You need to turn it off because we're getting erroneous readings,'" he said.

And, if one were to break, the pilot or copilot would have to flip a switch to replace it, something that a pilot stressed during an emergency might not do.http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-transponder/?c=&page=0

 

[lawstudent]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malays...sent-signal-4-hours-after-vanishing-1.2570313

Thanks - all "anonymous" officials still. I don't take that to be confirmation yet.

 

[ManPam]

Of course we can. I assume the reason we don't is for security reasons - if all planes were wired to some international GPS tracking system, that would compromise military opps, and if someone hacked into it, it could cause problems. I assume there has to be an off switch for maintenance reasons/cases of power failure or fire, or cases where a plane needs to lay low or the GPS is malfunctioning and causing confusion.

A lot of people are complaining about why "we" don't do this or that. The U.S. generally has excellent safety features and resources - we don't decide how other countries choose to operate or spend their money.

By "we" I was speaking about "technologically capable human society" rather than the US.

** Edited thanks to 's explanation about the transponder using GPS in a previous post. **

 

[catatonia]

Why is transponder made available to the pilot to turn on or off?

Why,/when would a pilot want to turn it off?

I think this question was answered in a previous thread, let me see if I can find it.

edit: here we go:

Originally Posted by popsicle

Why would it be set up to allow a transponder to be shutoff, stupid. imo

Originally Posted by

Because they can malfunction. They can fail (as can anything) and draw excessive current, they can can transmit incorrect altitude information (happened to me once, although in that case you can turn off the altitude and just send the code).

You have to be able to turn things off. Planes fly with stuff like that disabled.

www.websleuths.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10312594&postcount=348

 

[Plumeria5]

Nah, they were looking for crash debris. Almost put myself to sleep a couple times looking at over 1400 tiles of ocean waves. But I stopped looking this A.M.; I'm more convinced today (JMO) that we are not looking for wreckage, but an intact plane (with hopefully surviving passengers) somewhere.



I'm thinking along those same lines. Not everyone is (can be) as clueless as they've been trying to lead us to believe.



Here are a few more facts:

• NO satellite record of midair explosion in the region

• NO unaccounted for debris found on all the satellite tiles viewed at least 30 times each

• 'Pings' picked up by US space satellite for several hours after the plane disappeared from Malaysian radar. (If it happened, it happened. There can be no denying it later.)

• More than 20 top technology people (non USA citizens) aboard that plane, including a mysterious PhD professor of technology and a group of Chinese and Malaysian nationals headed to a business conference on a Saturday morning, from a company named Freespace that specializes in high-technology electronic warfare and the production of radar-blocking aeronautic technology

• the airplane's transponders that are used for radar communication were turned off (and manually is the only way according to experienced pilots)

• US intelligence has determined deliberate, intentional, 2-part action in the above

In addition, there were reports of engine readings sent automatically by systems in the Boeing indicating the plane was in the air for 4 more hours after the last radar contact. While that's yet another thing some governments are trying to deny now, from what I understand, the sending of those transmissions is passive, something built into the Boeing 777 (and it's variants), and not something the pilot would actively send or not send. So the fact that people would first mention the readings, then deny receiving them, is also suspicious, IMO.

BBM I am starting to lean towards the theory that a hijacker, who knew there were a lot of brilliant minds on board who could further their cause with their expertise, forced the pilots to go under the radar and land at an unknown location. I am hoping they spared the others, but doubtful, and they are holding hostage those select passengers.

 

[Elley Mae]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html?hp&_r=0

ABC News reported on Thursday evening that American officials believe the shutdown of two communications systems aboard the aircraft happened at separate times, suggesting they were turned off deliberately rather than as a result of a catastrophic failure.

The chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said that the last data received from Flight 370 came at 1:07 a.m. on Saturday and gave no indication of trouble with the plane.

“That was the last transmission,” Mr. Ahmad Jauhari said at the news conference, held in Sepang, where the international airport serving Kuala Lumpur is. “It did not run beyond that.”

The Journal later corrected its report to say that it was satellite contacts, not transmission of technical data, that had continued for hours.


Has anyone heard any word on drones being used in the search?

 

[SeriouslySearching]

I haven't seen anything truly making sense about this missing airplane.

Yes, it is a huge ocean. However, there are many countries now involved in searching for it. Military capabilities, spying capabilities, and other forms of scientific ingenuity are being applied from countries all over the world. They must be covering a lot of territory at a rapid pace.

If they have found zero information after all this time, something is way off.

 

[JerseyGirl]

more on the Freescale workers ...

The 20 Freescale workers confirmed as passengers on the missing flight were part of a larger group of 29 managers en route to Beijing from Malaysia for a month-long training course. The remaining nine were scheduled to fly to Beijing on a separate flight.

The Malaysian Insider spoke with Jelawati Jalil, age 32, while she was waiting for news of her husband, Freescale manager Safuan Ramlan, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

"There were no strange signs before he left for KLIA. He has been working with Freescale for more than five years. They used to send him abroad previously but it has been a while since his last trip," Jalil said, according to The Malaysian Insider.

http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...ale-confirms-workers-on-missing-malaysia.html

 

[Soulmagent]

Poor people must have freaked. Missing plane and then yours has an issue.

Passengers forced to evacuate U.S. Airways flight in Philadelphia after tire blows during takeoff

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/web/kmgh/news/passengers-forced-to-evacuate-us-airways-flight-in-philadelphia-after-tire-blows-during-takeoff03132014

 

[ManPam]

I'm a pilot, I actually have operated transponders, and that list is perfectly good from my point of view.



It's a checklist item like a lot of things. Automation is not the solution to every problem.



A GPS transmitter is attached to a satellite that weighs about 2 tons and orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 20,200 kilometers. Anyone who could carry one of those in their pocket would be big enough to wade through the Indian Ocean and feel for the wreckage with their bare feet.

What we carry around in our pockets are GPS receivers that receive the signals sent by the GPS transmitters and use those signals to determine the position of the receiver. Aircraft have GPS receivers, they are connected to the transponder which has its own high powered transmitter to send the plane's location - as determined by the GPS receiver on the plane - to the ground.

How would you do it?

It's not really stone age technology.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. I didn't realize that the transponder was utilizing GPS technology. Clearly I've never been in a cockpit before. I only had seen a picture of the transponder unit in an article and it didn't look like the most modern device to my uninformed eyes.

 

[Tssiemer]

I have a feeling we'll be at this for years.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[gregjrichards]

I agree that pilot suicide is a possibility but then I wonder what would be the point of turning off the transponders and turning around? Why not just put it in the South China Sea? Because of this, pilot suicide is low on my list.

I guess if the pilot wanted to commit suicide by crashing the plane he may feel ashamed about doing it and by turning off the transponder he may hope the plane will crash, the wreckage never would be found and nobody would find out what he had done.

I suffer from depression because I was the victim of medical negligence and had surgery that left me disabled aged 22. I am nearly 30 now and feel embarrassed and ashamed about my depression even though what happened wasn't my fault. I have never tried to commit suicide and certainly wouldn't injure anyone else in the process. But I can understand someone killing themselves but trying to make it look like an accident or the act of someone else because they were ashamed and felt they were taking the cowards way out in their mind.

If the pilot committed suicide by crashing the plane and taking the lives of 239 people he will be remembered as an evil, heartless monster. However if the plane crashes and it looks like an accident he will die a hero who tried to save the plane.

I just wanted to explain why the transponder may have been switched off in a suicide. I don't know what has happened it is still a mystery.

 

[lawstudent]

By "we" I was speaking about "technologically capable human society" rather than the US.

I get your reasons for why we wouldn't want them permanently on, but still why not use a GPS unit which could be disabled instead of relying on old transponder technology which doesn't report in as often? I thought I saw that the transponder only pinged every 30 secs? I suppose the old adage "if it ain't broke" applies...

Money. Many countries don't have a lot of resources, and the airlines/manufacturers aren't going to make them for every plane as a courtesy. It's like asking why all cars aren't up the latest safety regulations and every building is not brought up to modern fire codes. There are a lot of things we could do but don't, even in the U.S., mostly because of money and the fact that most humans don't think too far ahead.